Part 3 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: First For Money]
It was late in the winter of 186- that I arrived in Boston, having bade farewell to Old England for good and all.
It was not an easy thing to do, and it was with a wrench of the heart that I made the break-away.
I confess the separation was not entirely of my own choosing, that I left under a cloud I do not care to lift, that I had sinned the sins of youth and repented of them. Nothing more shall I say; but one thing I can never quite forget,--back in old Lancas.h.i.+re was I gentleman born and bred.
When I landed, less than fifty dollars had I in my pocket; but that did not fret me, for I had been a.s.sured an Englishman of good birth and breeding had but to pick and choose in the ”States.” All my money and most of my conceit were gone when I met Arthur Hacking a month later.
I had first stopped at a good hotel, and offered my services at genteel occupations, such as banking and school-teaching. But business men, very naturally, declined to trust a man without references who admitted that his past was not clear; and from school-teaching I was prohibited by a lamentable weakness in both mathematics and the languages. Indeed, I then realized for the first time that there were more important schools than that of the ”cinder-path,” and something more was needed to get on in the world than a highly cultivated pair of legs.
As my money disappeared my ideas moderated. I moved to less and less pretentious quarters, until an attic-room and a sickly fire became luxuries I was likely soon to miss.
As if it were yesterday do I remember the raw March morning, when, having spent a few cents out of my only remaining dollar, I set out to make a last desperate effort for employment other than that of the h.o.r.n.y-handed son of toil. At noon I stood on the corner of Was.h.i.+ngton street and Cornhill, utterly at a loss what to do. My overcoat was in p.a.w.n, and an east wind, such as Boston only knows, was freezing my very marrow. The streets were full of half-melted snow and ice, and my feet were wet and cold.
As I stood there with much of the feeling and something of the att.i.tude of a lost dog, I suddenly recognized a man to whom I had applied a few days before for a position as bookkeeper. I stopped him and asked bluntly for work of any kind. He offered me a job as day laborer, cutting ice on some pond several miles away; for he was the manager of an ice company. I should have accepted at once had he not, with true Yankee shrewdness, argued from my evident necessity and unskilfulness that I should work for less than a regular day's pay. At this I demurred, but should certainly have yielded had not Hacking, by some freak of fortune, pa.s.sing by, caught in my speech the accents of the ”old s.h.i.+re.”
He introduced himself without ceremony, and taking me by the arm, led me away, telling the ice-cutter to go to a place where the climate would give him no occupation, unless he changed his business.
Hacking was a big, bluff chap with a red face, and not a bit of the Yankee about him, though he was then some ten years over. When he offered me his friends.h.i.+p, and suggested that we could talk better in a warm place, and after a lunch, you may be sure I did not refuse him. My heart and stomach were alike empty.
All through my disappointments a stiff upper lip had I kept, but this first bit of kindness was almost too much for me, and I nearly played the woman for all my twenty years.
We adjourned to the ”Bell-in-hand,” where I told as little as possible of my story to him, between alternate mouthfuls of cold beef and swallows of old ale.
I confessed to him I was ”dead broke,” and could find no employment; that is, no employment for which I was fitted. He asked me for what I was fitted, and I told him I was blessed if I knew; that as near as I could discover day labor was about all I was good for. He clapped me on the back with a ”Never say die, my lad!” but could think of no suggestion which promised me any relief, and finally invited me to drive home with him. He owned a little inn at Brighton, and promised me food and shelter for a few days until I could ”gather myself together.”
That this very necessary feat could be performed in a ”few days” I very much doubted; but the invitation I accepted gratefully, and five o'clock found me sitting beside him on the narrow seat of a light carriage, my portmanteau tied on behind.
The road to Brighton was a very decent one, and the big roan mare he drove reeled off the miles in a way that opened my eyes to the possibilities of the trotting horse. I doubt if there was her equal in all England.
A clock was striking six when we stopped before the door of the ”Traveller's Rest,” and I slid off the seat on to the frozen ground, my legs so stiff that I could scarcely walk.
It was a large white house, with green blinds, and a piazza with tall white pillars in front. Cosy enough it seemed, too, with its lighted windows and its smell of hot meats; while from the bar in the corner came the sounds of a jingling piano and a good voice singing an Old Country ballad of ”Jack and his Susan.”
I found the inside of the house as comfortable as the outside looked inviting, and it was after a better dinner than I had eaten for many days that I sat with Hacking in a little parlor off the bar, my feet toasting at a coal fire, taking a comforting pipe and an occasional sip of the ”necessary.”
It did not take me long to find that Hacking was most interested in sporting matters, and our conversation gradually harked back to the cracks of the cinder-path who were in their glory when he left Lancas.h.i.+re, ten years before. A little information I gave him about old friends, and then we talked of those who had taken their places, Hacking bewailing the fact that there were none like the ”good uns” of the past.
”How many men are there to-day,” he asked, ”who can do the hundred in even time?”
”There are very few good sound even-timers in all England,” I answered, ”and only two among the amateurs,--one a c.o.c.kney, the other a Yorks.h.i.+reman. The only Lancas.h.i.+reman who can do the hundred in ten seconds is sitting with you to-night, and little likely to see the Old Country again for many a long year, if ever.”
At this, Hacking gave me a very comprehensive look, puffed a few times vigorously at his pipe, and said, ”Young fellow, boasting is a very bad habit, particularly on sporting matters. I will bet you your board bill for a month against the pipe you smoke, that you cannot show me better than eleven seconds to-morrow morning.”
”Eleven seconds!” said I, ”a school-boy should do that.”
”Yes, eleven seconds,” spoke up Hacking again. ”You are not in condition and the track is slow, which will even matters up, and I'll give you the advantage of the odd fraction.”